By JAMES WALLACE, P-I AEROSPACE REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, October 26, 2006

Editor's Note: The number of planes produced by Airbus at its plant in the Chinese port city of Tianjin was originally stated incorrectly.

With time running out this year to beat The Boeing Co. and keep the jetliner order crown that it has owned since 2001, Airbus pulled a rabbit out of its hat Thursday. But it may be too far behind to catch Boeing, which also won new orders.

Airbus announced orders and commitments for 235 planes -- 170 for airlines in China, where Airbus said it will establish its first airplane assembly plant outside of Europe.

The European company also received an order for 65 jets from Skybus Airlines.

Skybus? It's a paper airline that won't start operations until next year.

The startup carrier, based in Columbus, Ohio, has billed itself as "The Next Generation of Low-Fare Airlines." But Skybus faces stiff competition in Columbus from a low-cost airline that is well known, Southwest. Some industry experts don't believe Skybus will be around long enough to take delivery of many, if any, of those 65 jets from Airbus -- an order worth about $4.3 billion at the listed price of the 124-passenger A319s that Skybus ordered.

"It's been a few years since an order of this meaning and magnitude has come from a low-cost startup airline," boasted John Leahy, Airbus chief operating officer and its brash jetliner sales chief.

"It's hilarious," countered Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis for the Teal Group, an aviation industry consulting firm in Fairfax, Va. He said Airbus appears to be on a "fishing expedition" as it tries to close the order gap with Boeing, which has 773 net orders this year. Boeing added 20 more 737 sales to its total Thursday.

Airbus had 226 orders as of the end of September but will not update its figures until next month.

"The days of a low-cost airline sticking a branch in the ground and hoping it grows into a tree are over," Aboulafia said of Skybus.

That view was echoed by Mike Boyd of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting group in Colorado.

"The last two things in the world that have a chance of survival are a snowball in Hades and 65 new Airbus jets in Columbus, Ohio," Boyd said.

With fuel prices high and competition tough, even established low-cost airlines such as Southwest and JetBlue are having trouble making money. Six-year-old JetBlue announced this week that it was deferring orders for more Airbus planes and backing off growth plans after posting a loss of $500,000 in the quarter that ended Sept. 30. JetBlue lost $32 million in the first quarter of the year.

A Skybus spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

In a news release, the airline said it will begin operations in the spring of 2007 with non-stop service to "major" U.S. markets from Columbus.

Skybus said it will use leased Airbus planes until its newly ordered jets are delivered starting in late 2008.

Boeing has won more than 1,000 orders for its 737 this year and last year. Production is sold out for several years.

"The last thing Boeing needs is a fruitcake order like this," Boyd said of the Skybus deal with Airbus.

He recalled the 787 order that Boeing received in October 2004 from the upstart airline Primaris. It was the first U.S. carrier to order the Dreamliner. Primaris had great ambitions but never took off. Boeing removed the 20 Primaris jets from its order book earlier this year.

As shaky as the Skybus order may be, the China order is a big boost for Airbus, which has been rocked this year by costly delays to its A380 program.

Airbus said it had signed an agreement with the Chinese for 150 of its A320 single-aisle jets and 20 A350XWBs.

It's not clear if the 150-plane deal is a firm order and will be counted in the 2006 order book. In December, Airbus also announced a 150-plane order from China, an order that pushed it past Boeing's record 1,002 orders. There were questions by some analysts at the time whether the China order should have been included in the 2005 total. Boeing also won a 150-plane order from China last year, but did not count those orders as firm until this year

Boeing last beat Airbus in orders in 2000.

Airbus said China signed a letter of intent to buy the 20 A350 planes, so those won't be counted as firm orders just yet. The A350XWB (extra wide body) is the redesigned plane that Airbus is counting on to win back market share being gobbled up by Boeing's 787 and 777. EADS has not yet given the OK for Airbus to develop the A350, which was supposed to be ready for airlines in 2012 -- four years after the 787. But there has been industry speculation in recent weeks that EADS may be forced to delay the plane further, given the ongoing problems with the A380, the big Airbus jet that is two years late.

As part of French President Jacques Chirac's visit to China Thursday, Airbus announced that it will build an A320 final assembly plant in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, not far from Beijing. The plant would produce its first A320 in 2009 and have the capacity to assemble as many as four planes a month.